


Our Love Story Could Be Kind Of Gory

by ihaveacleverfandomurl



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Zombie Apocalypse, Angst, Blood and Gore, Enemies to Lovers, Eventual Smut, M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-10-31
Updated: 2017-11-25
Packaged: 2019-01-27 11:15:21
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 4
Words: 6,661
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12580576
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ihaveacleverfandomurl/pseuds/ihaveacleverfandomurl
Summary: The zombie apocalypse is a place of terror and death, but if everyone’s going to die, maybe there’s nothing left to lose. Keith can blow off some steam, and Lance can forget about worrying about his family for a while.Hooking up when the world is ending around you can be a no-strings-attached kind of thing, right?





	1. The Beginning of the End

**Author's Note:**

> This is often explicitly gory. Like pretty goddamn gross. Because I like that shit, but plenty of people don't. Just so you know.  
> title taken from the lovely [Zombie Song by Stephanie Mabey](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZPNqub966Tw)  
> HAPPY HALLOWEEN MY BOIS

\- PROLOGUE -

The bite is small, and clean. At first. It turns an angry red within the half hour, and by the time an hour has passed, it’s leaking pus and dark blood. Bile and black, thin liquid ooze across pale skin that’s starting to tinge blue.

That’s how Keith’s mother goes, in the first few days of the apocalypse.

His father tries to take care of her – they don’t really have a lot, certainly not enough to cover medical expenses for some strange infection off a bite from a weird creep on the street. He cleans the wound, almost continuously for hours, through the night and into the morning. Calls for Keith to bring warm water and towels to pat at his mother’s forehead with a washcloth. Keith hovers in the doorway when his mother starts twitching fitfully, kicking around the covers, eyes rolling back. He wraps his arms around himself when his father leans closer to caress her face.

He muffles a scream when his mother shoots up in bed and claws at his father, yanking him close enough to sink her teeth deep into his Adam’s apple.

He does scream when she turns distinctly dead, whited out eyes on him and licks her blood spattered lips, and he slams the door to the bedroom shut when she growls.

He doesn’t know how long he has. He thinks she’ll probably get out of the room soon. But he knows he has to leave. His father is dead, throat ripped out and eyes glassy, spread across the bed. His mother is sick, very sick, something is wrong with her and Keith knows that if he doesn’t leave this house, he will die.

He tears through the house with the first backpack he can get his hands on – stuffing in warm clothes, food, a water bottle. Odds and ends are tossed in too: a first aid kit, a roll of duct tape, flashlight, lighter.

He hesitates in the living room, thinks about his mother’s blank gaze, and stretches to reach his father’s knife on top of the cabinet – a ten inch, wickedly sharp thing, from a time when money wasn’t so tight, a symbol he hadn’t been able to sell off, whether for sentiment or bitter nostalgia or something else. Now it spends its time unsheathed on display and collecting dust, and Keith is thankful for it even as angry fear thumps in his throat. Heat gathers behind his eyes as he wraps a hand around the smooth grip and clips it onto his belt.

They’re gone. His father and mother are gone. He takes one more look around and breathes.

Keith Kogane steps out the front door of his house for the last time at 7:47 AM on day two of the beginning of the end.

* * *

Lance watches his little brother slip away in his arms on day five. He tries to breathe even as Rafael gasps painfully, petting his hair as he thrashes, and a sob escapes when he doesn’t anymore. Rafael is limp when their sister Gwen tugs him from Lance’s hands, and the wail that erupts from him is uncontrollable, even as Gwen hisses at him to shush.

They have to get rid of Rafael’s body, quickly and quietly, or the dead will find them, too.

He scrubs at his face and stares around. For the sake of everyone else here, he has to...to let go. For Gavin, and little Mariposa. For Angela and Nicolas, moved far away years ago, for their parents, on a trip, maybe living, maybe as terrifyingly still as the youngest of the McClains was now. Maybe reanimated and stealing away more life from the world.

He’s still hiccupping to a crying stop when he feels small hands clutch at his leg, and Mari is trembling, her face a mess of snot and tears. And he’s down on his knees next to her, wiping her face clean as gently as he can, stroking her head too. He has to be strong for his siblings so that they don’t break. He pulls Mari to him, pressing her into his chest, and he looks up to Gavin, who’s pale, faded teal hair in disarray, eyes red. The phase he’s been in has never allowed for much vulnerability, but he’s shaking, and Lance reaches out for him, and he comes.

Lance holds Mari in a one-armed hug, Gavin’s fingers in the other hand, and he cries some more. Quietly now.

“It’s time to go.”

Gwen is stone-faced at the door, and Lance jerks. “But _Mamá y Papá_!”

“They’re not coming back, Lance. I’m not letting this −” her voice wavers, a hint of a crack in the mask. “I won’t let it happen again. We can’t stay in this house.”

Lance stares at the engagement ring on her finger and thinks of her fiancé, possibly out there amongst the masses of dead. Thinks of his own friends.

They have to live for the living.

Lance McClain and his remaining family members leave their house for the last time, tears still burning down faces as they turn their backs on their first casualty – a boy who never even reached the age of six.

It’s 2:23 PM on day five of the beginning of the end of the world.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> henlo welcome to another klance fic i have a problem but i love gore and gross stuff and it be halloween so yay!!  
> rn it's just sad and gory but lookin forward to trying to get some "it's the end of the world so i don't care let's just fuck" smut up in here so that it can be hot and gory ooooop  
> -  
> Keith’s family is....pretty basic, but loving, unlike my previous fics. But Lance’s fam is taken directly from my Klance All The Voices series if you want more background on them.  
> 


	2. Group Work

Month Three

Lance slams the butt of his gun into the zombie’s skull with a grim determination, listening to the crack and crunch, gauging if it’ll be too loud. It goes down as he feels disgusting zombie guts spatter across his face. He grimaces and does it again as the zombie croaks, weakly wiggling on the ground, its lopsided, smashed face dripping dark blood.

This time, the head explodes under the worn wood, and the zombie moves no more.

“Lance!” Hunk’s voice breaks him from staring down at the mess, and he looks up, wiping down the gun on his sleeve.

“Okay, thank god. You’re good. They thought you’d gotten swarmed, they sent me to find you!”

“What? The resident sharpshooter?” Lance musters a grin as Hunk envelops him in a nice, big, warm hug. “They don’t know me very well, then.”

“They know you just fine, dork.” Pidge is wading through zombie bodies to get to them, too.

“The group knows you’re a little too brash sometimes when you think you can make runs on your own.” Hunk sighs as he lets go. “They’re on the verge of kicking you out, Lance.”

“But I bring home half the supplies we end up scavenging!”

“I’m just...I’m telling you, that’s what they’ve been saying.” Hunk rubs the back of his neck uncomfortably. “It doesn’t help that Zarkon hates how you and Lotor are always clashing. And you know, you just punched Lotor this morning.”

“Fuck Lotor. He’s a conceited prick.” Lance glares as Pidge laughs.

“Doesn’t change the fact that Zarkon rules and that guy’s his evil spawn.”

“Who decided he was in charge, anyway?” Lance rubs another bit of blood off his gun bitterly. “Maybe I should just leave. Start up my own group.”

“But your siblings?” Hunk sounds worried, bless him.

Hunk and Pidge are acquaintances from a lifetime ago, kids down the street, and when they’d all come into the group they were in now – including a pretty sweet base with water, weapons, food and even some generators – they’d become fast friends. Hunk Garrett was a gentle soul that preferred tending to the gardens than fighting, but no one escaped re-killing a few undead out here, and he could hold his own with his size and a good solid baseball bat. Pidge Holt was the genius behind some of their best zombie defenses and traps, and was quick with their own weapons, whatever they found in their hands at the time.

If only the roost wasn’t ruled by Zarkon and his son Lotor, who made their disgust for Lance in particular very well known, they’d have a good time here.

Lance would have up and left by now, but Mari is safe here. Gavin’s found his own place. Even Gwen’s made friends and discovered a girl who’s lessened the sting of removing her engagement ring.

Lance can’t bring himself to uproot them.

“I’m just...I’m just saying that, Hunk. I wouldn’t actually. I know they’re doing good with the group.” Lance slings his gun over his shoulder and picks up his backpack – filled with the supplies he’s gathered − and chews on his lip as he looks down at the crushed zombie head, yellow teeth sitting sideways in gray gums. A fly buzzes amidst the mess. “I can’t bring them out here, not again.”

* * *

 “Keith, think about this.” The warning tone is one of the most irritating things Keith thinks he’s heard in a while. He whirls on the voice, the shock of white hair and the scarred face that’s emerging from the interior of the house.

“Shut up! You’re not my _dad_!” He flinches after he says it, and watches as Shiro does too.

Takashi Shirogane, the kid of the Koganes’ family friends, and Keith’s old babysitter, on occasion. Now infuriatingly holier-than-thou in the art of surviving in a post-apocalyptic world of the dead wanting to eat you.

“Keith. You know Shiro is right!”

Keith turns his glare on Allura Altea, who, yeah, also annoys the shit out of him. The two of them, standing side by side. Perfect and commanding and _right_. They even look perfect, covered in sweat and grime, Allura’s grown out silver hair cut into an unintentionally choppy bob, Shiro’s right arm hacked off last month to prevent infection. The only way they could be more frustrating is if they actually started dating and officially became the goddamn power couple they already were. But for some reason, the two find it fit to dance around feelings in the middle of the zombie apocalypse and simply settle for giving Keith Parent Talks together.

“ _Matt_ agrees with me!”

“Nope!” Matt Holt appears in the window long enough to cheerfully negate the claim, and vanishes once more. Shiro’s best friend from college is usually up for Keith’s ideas, but apparently not today.

“Fucker,” Keith mutters, and Shiro narrows his eyes. His singular arm twitches like he means to cross two arms, but remembers halfway through the motion he can’t.

Keith watches the movement with a wave of unwilling guilt. It’s his fault Shiro lost his arm. Shiro says it isn’t, but it was Keith that he’d been rescuing when the bite had happened, and thank god they’d been able to saw off the limb immediately afterward. But every time he sees the stump, he remembers.

“Keith.”

Reluctantly, he looks up. Shiro’s gaze is a little more gently rebuking now. “You can’t take down Haggar and her crew by yourself. They’ve got numbers and resources.”

“Exactly! And we don’t! They’re picking this place clean!” Keith grips his knife. “We’re barely scraping by, and soon, they’ll come for _us_!”

“He’s right there, Shiro!” Coran Altea’s bubbly nature can be annoying, but secretly, Keith appreciates it − most of the time. He certainly can’t be cheerful in the middle of a zombie horde, but somehow, Allura’s uncle manages to be a ball of sunshine.

Shiro purses his lips. “We can’t afford to go up against them. Even a small supply running crew of theirs usually has more people than we do all together.”

Keith growls and turns away.

“Supply run only today, Keith.”

“Fine!” he snaps, stalking away through trees. The nearest town usually can be counted on for a few missed stores still containing useful items, if you can pick your way through herds.

It was lucky, really, that they’d found the well-built cabin in the middle of the woods, complete with a solid wooden fence and a well. If only the large and malicious group led by Haggar didn’t rule the territory with an iron fist. Allura and Coran had been a part of them, once. Then they’d killed Allura’s father and Coran’s brother, Alfor, and the two had known they’d had to escape.

Keith bites back a snarl. They need that base Haggar’s crafted so carefully. All barbed wire and a well-run system of renewable resources, yet they still run to the town for supplies Keith’s group so desperately needs.

One day. One day, he’s going to launch an attack. And inside those walls, him, Shiro, Matt, Allura and Coran will finally be able to survive.

* * *

 “You can’t be serious.”

“As the zombie plague.” Lotor’s smirk curls across his face. Lance wants to punch it. But that’s what got him into this predicament in the first place. He’d punched Lotor before he’d stormed off on a supply run after Lotor had made some stupid comment about Gavin being useless, and now...

“I’m one of your most useful gunmen!”

“We can survive without you,” the other man sneers. “I’ve told you, again and again, if you pissed me off, you’d pay the price. And my father agrees. You’re out, Lance.”

Lance looks for backup. His siblings are in the crowd. Gwen’s eyes are wide, Mari clings to her leg. Gavin behind them.

There, Hunk, Pidge, clutching each other.

“A bit of mercy, then, for a _useful gunman_.” Lotor’s father’s voice is deep and rumbling. Lance swallows as his own gun is dropped into his hands. The rifle’s wood is worn and stained, the metal of its trigger smoothed with use. The weapon of a soon-to-be dead man.

“I’m sending you on a mission. Make contact with a base up north. We have business to discuss. If you make it there and back with the shipment they should give to you, Lance, I’ll let you return.”

“W-where?” Lance’s mouth is dry.

“Haggar’s base.”

There’s a squeak from the crowd. Lance doesn’t know who it came from.

He’s protesting hopelessly. “That’s states away!”

“It is, isn’t it?” Zarkon’s grin is cruel. It is a death sentence, after all.

“I’m going with him!”

Lance stares at Pidge, a tiny figure broken away from the crowd, standing firm. Their eyes are wide, even as he detects a slight tremble in their knees.

“No, Pidge, don’t,” he hisses, but they shake their head at him.

“I’m going, and you can’t stop me.”

Zarkon isn’t pleased, but there really isn’t anything he can do as Pidge stalks up to him and starts to barter in a low voice. Lance overhears supply demands, and he turns overwhelmed eyes to his siblings.

They rush up to him, and he sinks into a hug with all three.

“I should come, too,” Gwen says in a rush, and Lance shakes his head into her shoulder.

“Take care of these two. Look after yourself. I’ll be back with that goddamn shipment, okay? I don’t care how long it takes me.”

“Buddy?” Hunk behind him, a heavy hand on his shoulder and a spiked bat in the other. He looks grim, lips pressed together. “I’m coming with you too. Pidge is talking to Zarkon. We’re living through this, okay?”

Lance turns and muffles a teary breath into his best friend’s shoulder. “Okay.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *sighs heavily* how hard is it for me to get these boys together already i promised smut but they still haven't met yet  
> soon............soon


	3. Meeting

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *stares at pairing tag, rolls eyes* l i s t e n it’s been three chapters and the klance meeting is only just now happening and to that i say i know, i know  
> but honestly what am i doing with this story?? like i have an outline and shit and it’s not gonna be like...SUPER long but............what am i doing?? does anyone even enjoy this???? ahhh

Month Five

It takes Keith’s stomach growling for the third time for him to shift in his hiding place. His leg is asleep, and he’s fucking starving. But he can’t move even an inch in the wrong direction, or they’ll see him, and then he’ll be dead. The crook of the tree he crouches in is digging into him as he stares down into the bustling little camp of Haggar and her cronies.

He needs one of those boxes of food stacked just inside that barbed gate. But the guards standing on either side of the entrance both hold automatic rifles cocked and ready, and he’s really torturing himself, coming here, where the labels on the sides of crates read tantalizing things like PRODUCE and CANNED GOODS, things to fill his empty stomach – just out of reach.

He wants to just...jump down, snatch one of those boxes, and run.

There, a group. Three or four, each carrying their own boxes.

Silently, he slides down the trunk.

They don’t have a tail, that he can see. He could pick off the end one. Have a meal tonight, for the whole group, for once.

He makes it as far as arms’ length from the trailing member of the party, knife drawn, fully prepared to slash a throat.

Instead the man whirls, eyes wide, and Keith’s blade slashes his chest instead. The crate tumbles into his arms.

There’s a shout, Keith startles and makes eye contact with a guard and the barrel of the automatic, and he runs.

Most of the fire misses him. The single sharp slash against his shoulder almost makes him drop his precious cargo. He grits his teeth and sprints harder, and the gunshots fade.

***

They eat that night. It had been a good haul, canned beef and beans and, oddly enough, a singular, slightly dented can of pineapple. Keith happily burns his tongue wolfing through it.

But no one else is very happy with him. Shiro’s eyes glitter dangerously when the group finally wrestles Keith out of his shirt and his arm is still bleeding profusely. The bullet basically grazed him, Keith reasons, but Allura shuts him up with her sharp cleaning of the wound and her angry glares as Coran wraps it up. It was _barely_ a graze. An inch farther over and it would have punched through something important.

It doesn’t matter. Keith lived, and they ate. And Matt finds him later in a rare moment of seriousness, and clasps Keith’s uninjured shoulder with a sincere look of thanks. Keith watches him walk away without a hand clutching at a constantly growling stomach, for once, and is just as thankful.

They’ll survive. Keith will make sure of it.

Of course, the universe would have it that a relatively superficial bullet wound isn’t the only sacrifice they have to make for their dinner.

They’ve relegated Keith to guard duty the day it happens, and he’s on his feet with their guard gun trained on the stranger the moment she emerges from the trees, but the stranger has her own gun on Keith, too.

She grins with sharp teeth as she slowly stalks nearer, and then lowers her gun. “Kill me, and the mercy we’re showing you dirty thieves will vanish.”

He’s seen her face, amongst Haggar’s crew, and he bares his own teeth. “What the fuck are you talking about?”

She reaches into her pocket and he makes sure she can see his finger on his trigger, but she merely tosses a tiny bundle at his feet. “A week. Then all bets are off.”

He keeps her in his sights as she turns tail and leaves, and only dares to finally pick up the item a good half hour after she’s left.

It’s a paper, tied to a rock. A letter. He scans it with growing dread.

_You and your group have a week to leave this territory. By the time a week is up, we will seize this house as our own. Should anyone remain, we will take it upon ourselves to kill them._

_− Haggar_

***

“We have no choice.”

“We can’t let them intimidate us! This is the perfect time to strike!”

“Too bad our group is small as hell,” Matt mutters. “If they’ve already got their eye on us, that’d be asking for execution, Keith.”

“We haven’t found this place and fought for it to just...give up!”

“That’s what you have to do in the apocalypse sometimes, Keith.” Allura’s words are clipped with grief, and he quiets a little. “Sometimes you just have to run. For your own life, and for those people you still have.”

Coran rubs her shoulder as she inhales shakily, his own eyes looking a little damp.

Shiro’s fingers brush hers before he turns back to Keith. “It’s time to find another place, Keith.”

“But water! And shelter! And the fact that that camp that Haggar runs, that could be _ours_!”

“Better wanderers than dead,” Matt says.

“We don’t stand a chance against them, Keith.” Shiro’s infuriatingly calm. “You know that. You took one box of food and they almost got you. We can’t take an entire camp.”

“I’m _not leaving_ −”

“Three days. Three days to gather supplies, and we’re going.”

The words are final, but it doesn’t mean Keith doesn’t grit his teeth and childishly turn on his heel to stalk out of the house and into the trees. 

* * *

 

Lance kicks over a branch and once more consults the old map he has tucked underneath his arm.

The trek across states toward the infamous Haggar’s territory has been simultaneously mind-numbing and terrifying. They keep on getting caught up trying to gather supplies, cities swarm them in undead, and food is scarce.

And for the past week, one of their party has barely spoken a word. Pidge has been jumpy, on edge, but brushing off any question about it directed their way.

“How close are we?” they finally ask, trudging along behind Lance.

“To Haggar’s base? Maybe a couple of hours away.”

A breath exhaled in a whoosh. “Can we...stop by the town, first?”

Lance shares a look with Hunk. “Coliville? I...I guess?”

Another breath. Shaky. “Sorry, I – hey, let’s stop for a second.”

They slow and turn, and Pidge is shifting from foot to foot, nervous gaze avoiding Lance and Hunk’s.

“I’m...uh...Listen, I wanted to help you, Lance. But also...I might have mainly wanted to come because...my brother lived out here, for college. Before zombie times. And I came to see if I could maybe find him.”

A pause, then Lance huffs. “So _that’s_ what you’ve been hiding this whole time? And you thought I’d be mad or something you came for family? It’s fine, Pidge! Hell, I used to live around here, too. Back in freshman year of high school. All that’s around here for me are memories, but even that’s almost worth the trip.”

Pidge’s eyes are bright. “Yeah? I just...wanted the slightest chance to see my brother again.”

Lance can’t help grabbing them up in a tight hug, tears pricking at his own eyes. “I got you, Pigeon.”

Hunk sniffles as he joins in. “I just wanted to make sure you guys made it out okay.”

“Aw, Hunk!”

The hug breaks up after a few tearful minutes, and Lance adjusts himself and the map to point toward the road, far through the trees, that will eventually lead them through to the town.

Pidge doesn’t want to talk about their brother just yet, but they sniff that they wouldn’t mind Lance prattling on about his time living here. And that time really is coming back, as they make their way past a slightly dilapidated speed limit sign, a kind of mossy statue, an empty gas station or two that Lance recognizes. He was younger then, only a few years ago, but who hasn’t aged the equivalent of sixty years in a few months.

Freshman year had been the height of his insecure cocky front, his need for validation, and he’d fixated on beating his classmates – and one, in particular.

“Kind of childish now,” he babbles. “Grades and stuff like that don’t mean shit to me anymore.”

He doesn’t think that Pidge and Hunk are even really listening, but the tension that’s been held between all of them recently has eased while he talks. Pidge feels calmer, Hunk smiles absently.

“But I mean, Ke – well, one guy really got on my nerves, he was always teacher’s pet, always doing good even when he barely did the work. An asshole, too. Whatever, though. Who’s to say if that shit even helped him out in end times?”

A symbol of a simpler time – a grumpy boy who could have been from a century ago, Lance couldn’t say. Fluffy black hair and dark eyebrows pulled down over stormy gray eyes.

Okay yeah, maybe Lance’s bi ass had been pulling a bit of a schoolboy crush in the form of a competitive teasing rivalry and complete and utter denial at the time.

Lance passes between abandoned cars piled together, distractedly trailing his hand against scratched up metal, exteriors of gutted vehicles. He’s lapsed into silence, because as he looks around, he remembers travelling this road in a noisy school bus, smelling like teenagers who’d forgotten they’d had access to showers and deodorant.

Man, what Lance would give for a shower, now.

Passing this graffitied stop sign, Lance had tossed a wadded up test he’d gotten back with an 85% at the back of a dark haired head two seats down, because he’d seen that test, and it has been 100%. And past this fork in the road, Keith Kogane had turned around to glare at him, and Lance had glared right back, stuck out his tongue like Mari did at their new little baby brother...

And Lance looks up, and there, sitting on top of a car, staring at his hands, is _him_.

And Lance merely gapes for a moment, because it can’t be, but it also _has to be_.

It’s all kind of the same – the dark mullet creeping into a curl at the nape of his neck (longer than it used to be), the pale, almost blemishless jealousy-inducing skin (dirty, now), the gray-blue-almost-purple eyes that never look his way. That’s completely the same.

“ _Keith_?!”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> in any case next chapter we have the dork boys set to be fighting and checking each other out a lot


	4. Thirsty

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i always post at 4am now yikeeeeeee  
> -  
> when u like....have the slightest lil bit of misgendering happen.....because that’s realistic in that particular context....but also u are nb and ur like....:/....why did i do that??  
> (i did it bc hunk and lance are lovely wonderful friends who will fite people who misgender pidge and i want them to demonstrate their willingness to fite even passively)

Keith jerks, sliding off the car quickly, his knife trained on Lance as those eyes finally catch his. Wary nerves in them. Lance barely registers Hunk and Pidge also going on high alert behind him.

Oh no, oh no, Keith has piercings now. A thick, slouchy crimson beanie is pulled over the tips of his ears, but it doesn’t mean it hides....No, shit, there’s hoops in his ears and a stud in his lip that Lance can’t...stop...staring at.

“Who the hell are you?”

“You’re...you’re alive! And here!” Lance can only stammer, but behind him, Hunk clears his throat.

“Yeah, uh, who is he?”

“That’s Keith! Lance, I’m Lance? We went to school together, man, way back before I moved! C’mon, you gotta remember something, we were rivals −”

A pause, then... “Lance...McClain.” Keith tries it out slowly, eyes narrowed, knife lowering ever so slightly, and Lance almost explodes in excitement.

“See!”

“You were that annoying kid who was always bugging me about teaching you how to get straight A’s, weren’t you?”

“Wha −”

Pidge snickers, loudly. Lance won’t have that, oh no.

He stalks up to Keith. Still has some inches on him, nice. Maybe a bit more gangly, but height gives him the upper hand when he places a palm in the center of Keith’s chest to shove him back. “Shut up.”

Maybe Lance didn’t think this a hundred percent through. Keith’s eyes are slits now, a knife hovering an inch from Lance’s throat. No fun and games here. “Don’t touch me,” he hisses.

“Whoa, whoa!” Hunk’s quick to play peacemaker, but Pidge’s small pistol is drawn and ready.

“You don’t touch him either.”

Keith twitches to glare at the tiny gun, then up at its owner. His brow furrows after a moment, and he reluctantly withdraws. “Why do you...look like Matt?”

“Matt?” Pidge sounds floored, their eyes enormous behind their glasses. Their gun lowers. “You know Matt? That’s...he’s my brother!”

Keith looks them up and down, folding his arms. “You wouldn’t be – Katie?”

“Pidge. I go by Pidge now. He’s...he’s alive, then?” Their knees wobble. “You know where he is?”

Hunk lets them lean into him and turns his own attention to Keith, wrapping a hand around his friend’s tiny shoulder. “I’m Hunk. Would you take us to Matt? They came out here to find him.”

Keith considers it, face guarded. “Matt would never shut up about you in the beginning. So I owe it to him, I guess.” He flicks a scowl at Lance, who swallows. “Just keep _that_ idiot from bothering me, or I’m carving out his tongue.”

“Hey!” Lance starts to protest, but Pidge takes quick steps to punch him in the arm, their eyes hard, the message clear. _Don’t fuck this up for me._

Lance quiets down.

Keith is already walking away, clearly uncaring if they follow, so they hurry to catch up. Lance draws even with Keith, cautiously over arm’s length away, but close enough to cast a few curious glances over at a remnant of his previous life.

Keith’s got a deep red hoodie on that must have once been vibrant but has now faded, featuring some half-scratched away words proclaiming “caffeine keeps me alive.” A touch more grimly macabre now than when it was originally made, Lance thinks dryly. Over the top is shucked a black military jacket with many pockets that bulge with mystery items, and Keith’s backpack is also almost filled to bursting. His slightly holey dark jeans and boots covered with mud are unremarkable, a pair of kind of stupid-looking but also maybe slightly-hot-looking biker glove adorning his hands – no, instead, Lance’s eyes land on the long sheath at his hip. He hadn’t really been looking closely at the weapon that he’d been threatened with, but the knife looks like the impressive type – something expensive and well-cared for (not that a weapon would be anything but in this day and age).

He wonders if Keith knows how to use it. A master at wielding weapons like he was at everything else.

He kind of has to be to have survived, huh?

He turns his eyes forward, watching the path through the trees that they’ve started to funnel into. The bushes and ferns hold little as far as he can see, but unease at their lack of options for open running space creeps up his spine, and he unhooks his gun from his pack, resting it over his shoulder as he scans the forest.

Sure enough, after a good half hour, he can hear telltale groanings of a member of the undead, and catch the first glimpse of a loner stumbling through the trees toward them.

Lance pauses to take careful aim, lining the zombie up in his sights when a gloved hand suddenly shoves his barrel down. “Stop, what are you doing, you idiot? The noise’ll draw them all in!”

Lance glowers up at Keith. “Fine, asshole, what are you gonna do to keep us from getting chomped, then? It’s right in our path!”

Keith merely sneers at him before turning and unsheathing his knife, stalking up the path. It _is_ a nice blade – and Keith can really use it, because before Lance can blink, the man has sliced cleanly through the zombie’s rotten skull. It drops to the ground and Keith wipes the black-brown mess from his knife before re-sheathing it. He crosses his arms and turns to arch an eyebrow at the group that has stopped to gape at him, and oh _shit_ , that unimpressed, aloof expression coupled with just how easily Keith had taken the zombie down should not be as hot as Lance feels like it is.

“Sometime this year, we can get back to camp, maybe?”

* * *

Keith is Really Fucking Pissed. Being pissed is a common state for him, but he’s more so than usual.

They have a group. They have a system. And Haggar is disrupting that enough. Having random strangers in camp is gonna upset every last standard procedure they have in place.

Having irritating, volatile strangers that come up and shove him in the chest and annoy the living hell out of him is gonna drive him up the wall.

And okay, maybe Lance isn’t a complete stranger, but honestly, Keith is having trouble remembering much of anything aside from the fact that Lance liked to blow spitballs at him in class sometimes.

Matt better appreciate the hell out of Keith bringing him a long-lost family member.

But honestly, maybe he’s being a little difficult, Keith thinks as Hunk gasps and runs past him to wade through undergrowth, kneeling beside a small patch of some kind of mushroom growing from a tree trunk. “Aw, look at these! We can bring some presents with us!”

Keith peers at them. “What, are they edible?” He’d be too wary to try. Besides, he rarely stops to smell the metaphorical flowers – he knows the area and he doesn’t even glance sideways at things like this anymore.

“Oh, yeah, wood ear is great! Protein and iron and −”

“Hunk’s a gardener. Don’t get him started, he’ll go on for hours,” Pidge snorts, continuing on by.

Keith considers the big guy plucking the thin fungus from the tree, the bobble on the top of his sunshine yellow hat wobbling as he heaves himself back up, tucking in the end of his matching scarf. A gardener, huh? That could identify edible plants? Useful.

He turns back to Pidge, who’s watching them. They see his calculating gaze and tug their oversized green flannel tighter around their body, folding their arms. “I built traps and shit for our group. Get the dead or a dumb rabbit. You trying to figure out if we’re worth your time?”

Keith narrows his eyes at them and starts walking again.

“We can’t stay, anyway,” pipes up a disgruntled sounding third voice from the back. Lance. “Well...I mean...I can’t, I guess. So no sharpshooter for −”

“Keith!”

The house and its surrounding fence has crept up on them quicker than Keith had thought, and there’s Shiro at the entrance, tentatively holding up their guard gun, eyeing the newcomers warily.

“Are we good? Who are they?”

“It’s Matt’s sister.”

“Sibling,” Hunk and Lance say at the same time, and Pidge darts forward, startling them all.

“Where is he? Where’s Matt?”

Shiro blinks down at them. “Um...”

“I’m Pidge, formerly known as Katie, and I just trekked halfway across the country to get here, can you show me my goddamn brother, please?”

“H-he’s in the house.” Shiro just steps aside in the face of the tiny furious whirlwind that is Pidge, and off they trot.

In the meantime, he turns his gaze to the other two, then to Keith. Keith knows he’s probably sporting a slightly stronger resting bitch face than usual, but Shiro smiles a little in the face of it.

“Making new friends, huh, Keith?”

“ _This_ guy?” is snorted from behind him, and Keith grinds his teeth together. It doesn’t take a genius to figure out the owner of the voice.

“I’m taking a nap. Do whatever you want with them. I’ve been nice enough today.”

“I’m Hunk, this is Lance!” burbles Hunk as Keith heads for the front door. “Here, we brought some mushrooms for you!”

Keith passes a tearful Holt hug in the living room, glancing at a bowled-over, lying-on-his-back Matt with a tiny twin mousy brown head buried in his chest before climbing the ladder up to his bedroom.

They really have been lucky, with this house. That’s why Keith is so reluctant to let it go. Their well is hooked up to the rest of the house, allowing for _running water_ , there are _three bedrooms_. Shiro and Matt took one with a double bed, and Coran and Allura, the other. That left Keith the wonderfully secluded loft, where his bed might be on the floor and not quite as comfortable, but it’s tucked away under a tiny window, and honestly, noise barely even carries through the little gap in the floor for the ladder.

Only just as he’s settling into his lumpy mattress, quiet footsteps and the creaking of the ladder alert him that someone is disturbing his sanctuary.

He sits up in time to see Lance’s head poke through the floor, and he glares down at him. “Did you get lost? The fuck are you doing here?”

Lance glares right back. “A nap sounded nice to me too, jeez! Shiro said if Pidge ends up sleeping in Matt’s room, then Hunk should probably room with Coran and Allura for the sake of space, and I’d probably fit up here. But don’t worry, Pissypants, I’ll be heading out soon enough anyway.” His face kind of screws up as he mutters, “Don’t know about anyone else, though.”

He clambers up the rest of the way and looks around the space.

Keith crosses his arms defensively. It’s _his_ space, it’s a place for him to chill the fuck out − just about the only place – alone and unjudged. And yeah, it’s kind of cluttered with stupid artwork and shit he’s made over the time they’ve spent here, but he didn’t know he’d have to share it with anyone, okay?

“Well, this is my bed, and my fucking half of the room if you’re gonna be here, all right?” Keith spits, falling back into his pillow with one last suspicious glare to get the message across.

Lance rolls his eyes and goes to curl up on the very hard wood floorboards on the other side of the tiny room. He tosses and turns for a few minutes before kind of sitting up and leaning against the wall, where he closes his eyes and actually stills.

Sleepily, Keith regards Lance through half-shut eyes, hoping he doesn’t get caught looking. He doesn’t want to give the asshole any more ammunition.

Lance McClain. It’s certainly been a while. Time has been kind to the boy who’d had a goofy grin wide enough to show off braces glinting across a still enormous gap between his front teeth. Whose face had been spotty and whose hair had been messy, his limbs too long to know what to do with.

No, now he still has a zit or two popping up across his forehead and cheeks, which Keith can’t blame him for in the midst of the apocalypse (Keith knows he’s _never_ taken care of his own face, so), but otherwise, his skin is smooth and kind of...cutely freckled. When he’s smiled at Hunk and Pidge, it’s revealed a perfectly even set of teeth, and his hair, when it’s flopping in front of his face, is...nice, instead of gross looking. Well, it _is_ pretty greasy. Lance probably hasn’t had the luxury of a running water shower in a while.

But he’s definitely grown into his height, so to speak. For the clown of a beanpole that he is, Lance seems pretty goddamn graceful.

The black turtleneck clings to his torso in a way that an awake Keith probably would have been able to drag his eyes away from, but a half-asleep Keith definitely cannot. The thick jean jacket that hangs off his frame is rolled up to his elbows, sleeves all pushed up, and Keith’s gaze catches on what looks like a tattoo on his right forearm, which dangles, balanced on his knee. Blue ink, waves maybe?

The state of his sneakers seems downright disgraceful – Keith swears he sees a bit of duct tape holding a heel together, never a good idea when you might have to run for your life – and his skinny jeans are tight, but not too tight, so Keith returns to his face. He’s leaning back against the wall and his eyes are closed, like Keith’s should be, his long nose shadowed by the faded blue floral baseball cap that’s about to tip its way off his head as he dozes. As blue as his eyes, if Keith remembers correctly.

Wow, he’s like, ultra gay when he’s tired. His eyes wander back to the wave tattoo. Ultra thirsty.

And when it’s the zombie apocalypse and he hasn’t seen another guy his age in like fucking half a year.

There are plenty of ways to explain away him suddenly and shamelessly ogling Lance, and if most of them might not hold up under close examination, he can always find another.

But one thing’s for certain. Lance McClain is an asshole. Keith doesn’t lust after assholes.

(But also...he couldn’t defend that in court.)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> o fuk!! i like this au a lot but imma be real it is like not popular?? D: i really appreciate the lovely commenters last chap but this is barely even getting views lol...and like when u write fanfic for comments cause ur life is uh.... p shit....and that sweet sweet validation of online commenters telling you that you actually write pretty ok is like nice??? well  
> idk my dudes i am utterly drained from a quarter not even fully over yet where my prof has spent the whole time telling me my writing is terrible so  
> let's just...,,,,,,get to the angry messy kissing boys...,,,,＼(;´□｀)/

**Author's Note:**

> EDIT (9/25): This has been on hiatus for a while ahhh ;;-_- sorry anyone interested! I hope to come back to this at some point but i also have a v important fic i'm tryin to finish rn!!  
> did u know.....that i am working on some [angsty dad!lance & extra-emo!keith klance over here](https://archiveofourown.org/works/16023596) as part of the 2018 klance big bang (which means there's BEAUTIFUL ART involved!) and i have a deep attachment to this fic??? well now u do so if it's ur thing u can....check it out.... *insert wiggling eyebrows here* if it's not, continue on w/ ur life my dude & have a gr8 day!!  
> -  
> HEYOOO if you wanna be an absolute sweetheart and support me and this fic in a completely free way you can [reblog this post right here](https://kayizcray.tumblr.com/post/166988998723/our-love-story-could-be-kind-of-gory)! Or feel free to share this trash with your friends! My dudes any form of spreading my work to others is the best fuckin thing lemme tell ya!!  
> -  
> reminder comments are my fuckin life and love and reason for writing fanfic tbh so if you wanna leave em i'll love you forever  
> -  
> [my creative tumblr](http://kayizcray.tumblr.com) | [my personal tumblr](http://ihaveacleverfandomurl.tumblr.com/) | ([& my cosplay instagram](https://www.instagram.com/kayizcray/) with some voltron cosplay on it)  
> 


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